Tomb Of Torture (1963)
There's a question on the front of the DVD box that asks us, "what is the
secret of the monster of the castle?" It has been my experience that the
secret is usually either fairly obvious or not very compelling and is more often than not a
combination of both of those. In this particular case, I don't believe they
ever answered the question. First of all, there isn't really any monster in
the castle to begin with. Sure, there is some disfigured guy who looks a bit
like professional wrestler Mick Foley that runs around conking people on the
head with a club. There's also some crazy chick that kills some people (at
least I think she did - this was another one of those affairs where the lengthy
shots of people walking in hallways and down stairs sapped my ability to focus)
and it turns out that she either likes to dress up in a suit of armor or she
thinks she's wearing one or some other character is having some kind of
delusion. You can clearly see that this is shaping up to be one of those films
that's mystifying in its reason for existence, since they don't really attempt
much a story and they don't slather on the monster mayhem either.
It's just people standing around looking vaguely pensive and saying little
(which is probably a plus because the voices that are dubbed here do little to
dispel the feeling that you're watching the repackaged lackluster Italian movie
this is). And I think you know what type of lackluster Italian movie I'm
talking about. Since this is before Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci began making movies, you're not to going to have any gore, any odd camera angles and the musical score switches from funeral organ crap to this bland background stuff that would be right at home on your grandpa's old stag films. Shoot, this movie even manages to fumble the obligatory skinny dipping scene!  The opening scene is supposed to lay the foundation for the situation in the big spooky castle just outside of town. The only thing it succeeds in laying
is a big fat stinky turd! (And you thought I was going to say egg! Turd is
funny, egg is cliched.)
Two women approach the castle and one of them
convinces the other to go inside. There wasn't any explanation as to why two
grown women would just be walking around and decide to
explore a castle in the middle of the day, but they do. Once inside the castle
they look around and they end up getting killed and then dumped in a field.
They cops find them just as this doctor is bringing his hottie daughter back to
town. I guess all that was designed to show us that there was some strange and
awful secret in the castle, but the only secret I was interested in was how two
women that were so clearly brain dead, managed to survive into adulthood like
they did. The cast involved in the rest of the movie included the doctor and
his daughter along with Elizabeth, who was the owner of the castle and chief
maniac, a nosy reporter named George, and a guy in a turban that looked like
ESPN's Swami (Chris Berman minus about a hundred pounds). His name was Raman
and every time someone said his name I immediately flashed to that ape with the
fish bowl on his head from Robot Monster since his name was Ro-Man. This movie isn't as good as Robot Monster, but I kept watching whenever Raman was on, because I thought he would tell me
whether to take the points on the Bengals game (always take dog when they're at
home, I always say).  Raman doesn't really seem to actually have any reason to
exist other than to mill around whining about how he can't find the body of his
dead wife, Countess Irene, who disappeared in the castle years ago. I think it
goes without saying that the newly arrived daughter, whose name is Anna is a
dead ringer for the dead Countess.
Her father is worried that she's going
insane, so he's brought her back to the castle in hopes of driving
her crazy or curing her or something. I think that the doctor and this Raman
Noodle guy knew each other, but other than someone saying that Anna was the
reincarnation of Irene, I never figured out why all these people were together.
With two dumb girls having been murdered, Anna decides it would be a good
time to take a skinny dip in the local lake, even though it looks really cold
and the nosy reporter whose car happens to break down right next to her is
wearing a heavy suit coat (and I must say that it isn't a very flattering cut).
After feigning outrage that her public skinny dipping was discovered, she
gets a ride back to town with this chap and in the next scene she's talking
about how she loves him and he's beating up a cop and her dad and babbling
about what a bad deal it was that he had to pimpslap his future father-in-law.
Huh? Did I miss something? Normally, I would credit a series of events like
this as being "fast paced", but somehow this development doesn't speed the
movie up any. In fact, the nosy reporter-turned-fiancee disappears from most
of the rest of the movie, only showing up with his new best friend Raman to try
and break into the secret torture dungeon in the castle. This is a laughable
effort with him and Raman taking a big log and repeatedly ramming it into the
wall, accompanied by a badly dubbed thud. They do this several times, decide
it probably won't work and then go back and do it some more times. I don't
remember how they finally got into the basement, but they did and just in time
to save Anna. Nothing much really goes on during the bulk of this movie. I recall some
confrontation with Anna and Elizabeth where Elizabeth scares Anna by telling
her that some people are going to kill her. Elizabeth is hanging out in the
castle trying to find some jewels that the dead Countess left behind and she
gets the information when she takes Anna captive later. Anna knows because she
has this unexplained connection with the Countess that remained unexplained. 
Raman and the reporter bust in just as Elizabeth is menacing Anna. The usual last minute antics ensue: A disfigured henchman ends up hanged after he gets tangled up in some chains, Raman discovers the remains of his long missing wife, and some guinea pigs that may be pretending to be rats, gnaw away at the rope on a crossbow until it goes off, impaling Elizabeth. Raman, the reporter, and Anna then stand
around wondering along with the audience just what it all had meant. I admired this movie for ending at this point, without even bothering to insult my
intelligence by trying to explain what we just saw.
I honestly don't recall much of anything happening in
this movie. I think that Anna had some nightmares where she was harassed by
some scary types and that came off like part of a really boring William Castle
movie, but the rest of the time people just stood around or walked here and
there and once in awhile there would be some cruddy little bit of violence
where someone would get choked or bonked on their noggin. You also had some
really exciting scenes of the henchman moving the stone block that was blocking
the entrance to the secret dungeon. I also think at one point, the doctor told
the cop who was nosing around at the castle that he
needed an enema, but that was probably just wishful thinking. This is simply a quite unremarkable all-around loser with nothing to justify seeing it,
let alone purchasing it. After viewing
this and the movie that was its original co-feature, Cave Of The Living Dead, it makes me wonder: Don't we
have enough of our own dull horror movies that we shouldn't need to import and
re-dub someone else's refuse?
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